August 2013

The government of Balochistan, the troubled southwestern province of Pakistan, registered a case against national television news channel ARY on Monday, August 26, after it aired a video clip of the destruction of the residence of Pakistan's founder, Muhammed Ali Jinnah. The case was filed under Pakistan's Anti-Terrorist Act of 1997, claiming that airing the footage could incite "violence or [...] glorify crime," in contravention of the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA).

It has now
been an entire year since Al-Hurra correspondent Bashar Fahmi, a Jordanian of
Palestinian origin, and freelancer Austin Tice, of the United States, went
missing in Syria. But the recent liberation of two freelance journalists held
for months gives us some reason to hope.

Hubaal, Somaliland's critical and much-beleaguered daily newspaper, is
back on newsstands after a presidential pardon last week. The paper was shuttered
on orders of the attorney general in June without explanation. In April, two
gunmen, subsequently identified by authorities as police officers, raided
the office of Hubaaland attacked
its staff after a series of critical articles accusing the government of
nepotism and misuse of office. Editor Hassan Hussein and Managing Director
Mohamed Ahmed were both convicted
on defamation charges last month and given prison terms. The two journalists were
released on bail and are appealing their convictions.

The
Committee to Protect Journalists and Human Rights Watch have jointly called on
the six presidential candidates of the International Olympics Committee to
ensure that future host countries of the Olympic Games fully comply with human
rights principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter, including press freedom and
non-discrimination.

A new English/Arabic online tool is available for citizen
journalists who have no previous journalism experience or training but are
reporting dangerous frontline stories. It uses animation--a novelty for such
guides--and its arrival is timely.

Last week, as Egypt plunged deeper into political violence,
CPJ recorded a sad statistic: the death of the 1,000th
journalist in the line of duty since we began keeping records in 1992. While
that benchmark death came amid a military raid, seven out of 10 killed journalists
were in fact murdered in
reprisal for their work-- and the killers have evaded justice in almost all of
those cases, our research shows.

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When Mick Deane was killed in Egypt on Wednesday, he became the 1,000th journalist documented by CPJ as having died in direct relation to his work. The photos above, a sampling of those who have died over the past 21 years, serve as a powerful reminder of the cost of critical, independent journalism.

Nadia Sharmeen was attacked when she tried to cover a protest in April. (Ekushey TV)

It has been a turbulent year for journalists in Bangladesh. It began with blogger Asif Mohiuddin being stabbed in January as he left his office in Dhaka. The following month, blogger Ahmed Rajib Haider was killed for his writing. Four other bloggers, including Mohiuddin, were arrested in early April (all four have been released on bail, but still face criminal charges). Meanwhile, an editor of a pro-opposition newspaper is imprisoned.

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Details are emerging of Sri Lanka's effort to control media
coverage of an ugly attack on demonstrators by security forces last week. In Rathupaswala
village in the town of Weliweriya, outside Colombo, on August 1, soldiers beat
and fired on people protesting what they feared was contamination of their
drinking water by a nearby factory. Most media accounts say three people died
and 50 were wounded (here is AP
and AFP
coverage). Journalists, reports say, were singled out.

Organized crime capos and corrupt politicians have been
getting away with murdering journalists in Mexico for so long that there isn't
a reliable count on the number of the dead or a useful way to measure the
crushing effects on a democracy when a country's press is afraid to tell the
truth. CPJ research shows that, of 69 journalists killed since 1994 in Mexico,
28 were clearly killed because of their work, and nearly all of those directly
targeted for murder. But the killing started years before that, the numbers are
not dependable, and the motives are often unknown, because the professionalism
of the investigations is doubtful. Mexico's state governments have simply
failed to find those responsible, and journalists working outside of the
capital have for the most part decided their only protection is to not cover
stories the killers don't want covered.

Following reports earlier this week that New Zealand, with
help from U.S. intelligence, may have spied
on one of its journalists, Wellington is under fire for tracking the phone
records and movement of another journalist. Ironically, this journalist came
under surveillance after writing about potentially illegal government
surveillance.

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The South African Broadcasting Corporation is in the news for not airing a politically
sensitive documentary that details allegations of apartheid-era theft of public
funds. The public broadcaster, which had commissioned the film, has also refused
to sell the rights back to the filmmaker and has filed a lawsuit demanding she turn
over her raw footage and accusing her of breaching copyright by staging private
screenings.

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Taylor Krauss, an American journalist,
freelance filmmaker, and founder of the testimonial website Voices of Rwanda, traveled to Uganda
roughly two weeks ago to conduct some filming in hopes of pitching footage later
to various media outlets. Krauss is no stranger to the region; he has been traveling
back and forth to the country for nine years. But now that he has been
arrested, held for three days without charge, had his equipment confiscated,
and finally forced out of the country, this probably marks his last visit. It
probably also marks bad news for the press in Uganda.

Recent revelations of American and British
mass surveillance of digital communications have triggered an intense
mobilization of European free speech and civil liberties organizations, which
have launched an online
petition calling on leaders of the European Union to halt the practice. The
#dontspyonme campaign was presented by Index on Censorship, an independent,
British, free speech nonprofit, at an event
in London on July 25. It calls on EU heads of government "to
clearly and unambiguously state their opposition to all systems of mass
surveillance" including that conducted by the U.S. National Security Agency
(NSA) and similar European agencies.